


Hearts and Grace Entwined

by Wolfling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfling/pseuds/Wolfling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Castiel is trapped in Purgatory, what are the Winchesters to do except go in and get him out? But there's more than just the leviathan to worry about there, and finding the way home demands more than just fighting their way through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearts and Grace Entwined

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> This was written for the 2011 SPN Reverse Big Bang. Many thanks to my artist Mizra whose piece had the plot spring up almost entirely full formed in my mind the second I saw it. I hope she likes the story her work inspired. Also many thanks to the RBB mods who were kind enough to give me an extension when I was not able to make my first posting date. I love this challenge and would've been incredibly disappointed if I'd had to forfiet.
> 
> Also thanks, as always to Omphalos, who betaed this for me in less than a day. She's a superstar!

Darkness.

It was all around him, smothering him, pressing down on him with the weight of... well, of a leviathan. It blocked out everything, and it was constantly threatening to crush the last of his light as well. All he could do was curl into as small a target as he could and cling to the tiny spark of grace he had left.

Everything in him shrank down to the single-minded task of survival, his sole focus being to keep the _darkness_ from swallowing what remained of him. He didn't have any strength left to plan or even really to think. He'd been reduced to a single imperative: to not be destroyed.

He had no idea how long that state continued; it could've been days, or it could've been centuries, but either way it did eventually end. It ended with a shriek that seemed to shake the universe with its frustrated anger, and a disoriented tumbling from the heavy smothering _darkness_ to a place no less dark but far more empty.

For a long time, he just lay there, staring up into the starless sky above him, aware of his body -- _vessel_ came the unbidden mental correction -- for the first time since this had begun. He stretched his arms and legs out as far as they could go, relishing in the fact that they moved as he bade without fight or argument. He was once again the sole controller of his limbs.

Thoughts, memory, took a bit longer to return than simple movement. When they did he almost wished they hadn't because what he remembered made him want to curl in on himself in shame.

He was Castiel, an angel of the Lord whose desperation to stop his brothers from restarting the apocalypse had led him to make a series of questionable decisions. He was Castiel, who, in hubris, had taken on a power that had never been meant for such as him and set himself up as the new God. He was Castiel, the idiot who had unwittingly released a threat as great as any apocalypse on the world. He was Castiel, the angel who had swallowed the leviathan and had subsequently been destroyed by them when they took over his vessel.

Except, apparently, not quite that last bit. He wasn't sure how, but he somehow had managed to survive, though only just. But it was enough; he was once again in sole possession of his vessel, it responding to his control alone. He brought his hand up in front of his face, watching as his fingers curled into his palm then stretched back out, all at his command. It was a small thing, a tiny victory in the face of the overwhelming disaster that could be laid at his feet, but Castiel relished it all the same.

But far too soon, his thoughts moved beyond that simple satisfaction to something much more imperative and alarming. If the leviathan were no longer within him, where were they and what kind of devastation were they causing?

As if in answer, another angry roar rent the silence and the dark sky above him was suddenly blocked out by something even darker. And massive. Very massive.

Castiel had no doubt that what he was seeing was a leviathan in its corporeal form, something it would never be able to manifest on Earth. So this couldn't be Earth. It also wasn't Heaven, and he didn't think it was Hell, which left...

Purgatory. Castiel felt a surge of complicated tangled emotions at the thought, though heavily prevalent was relief. If the leviathan were back in Purgatory then they weren't on Earth running amuck, all of which would have been his fault. Moreover, chances were that if the leviathan were back in Purgatory, it was because the Winchesters found a way to send them there. That Sam and Dean had found a way to clean up his mess.

His musings were interrupted by another roar above him and a massive shadow sliding even closer and it suddenly occurred to Castiel that lying out in the open was possibly not the best place to be.

Moving slowly, he sat up and got his feet under him, all the while keeping a weather eye on the intimidating shadows milling about above. He didn't perceive any reaction to his movement so cautiously he straightened up and tried to get his bearings, a task which proved to be more difficult. All he could sense in every direction was more of the same black featureless void. Even the leviathan circling above him seemed to be made up of more solid bits of the same thing.

One of the leviathan shadows moved lower and Castiel could _feel_ its malevolent attention reaching out, searching for something on which to turn its wrath. He fought the urge to just curl himself into as small a ball as he possibly could to escape its notice. Even if that worked, it would only be putting off the inevitable. No, the only choice he had was to move, even if he had no clue which way was the way out or if a way out even existed.

He would just have to pick a direction and hope that luck hadn't forsaken him yet. He spun in a circle several times before stopping and settling on one particular direction. Nothing made it seem more or less likely that this was the way out, but he would have to take it on faith, as little of that as he had left.

With one last glance at the shadows overhead, Castiel spread his wings and flew.

*****

It wasn't something he admitted to -- hell, the only person who even knew he did it was Sammy, and his little brother had enough tact to never acknowledge it -- but when Dean slept with Cas' trench coat he tended to sleep _better_. Longer, deeper, and with far more rest and far fewer nightmares.

Dean snorted at himself as he bunched the coat up and lay his head down on it, using it as a makeshift pillow. Just how pitiful was it that a grown man needed a security blanket to sleep, or that said security blanket was a rumbled, beat up old trench coat which, by any rights, should have started to mildew by now? Yeah, it had once belonged to an angel of the Lord, but Cas was long gone, destroyed by the monsters his hubris had let loose. Now it was just an old coat.

Except that it wasn't, not really. Not to Dean, at least, though again he would never admit it out loud. Maybe it was just his imagination, or maybe it had something to do with having been worn for so long by a being as powerful as Cas had been, but the coat, against all logic and sense, still seemed to smell like the angel. It was nothing that Dean would ever have been able to describe even if he'd been willing: something between the air after a spring storm had passed and fresh laundry still warm from being dried. It comforted Dean, made him feel safe and protected even when he knew he was neither of those things.

The upshot of all of this was that Dean had taken to keeping the trench coat stuffed into the bottom of his duffle bag, and it had become part of his bedtime routine to pull it out and either bunch it up to use as a pillow or spread it over him like a blanket. Sam had to have noticed, but after a single longer than needed look the first couple of times he ignored it for which Dean could not have been more grateful. Because there had been many nights that if he hadn't have had the coat and its freaky weird effect on his psyche, he wouldn't have been able to sleep at all.

The coat seemed to somehow keep the nightmares at bay, but that wasn't to say that Dean didn't dream at all when he slept with it. They were just good dreams, the kind where Dean was at peace and content and, dare he think it, even maybe happy. The kind that made the risk of derision and taunting for having a security blanket worth it.

Things stayed that way through them defeating the leviathan and even a little while after that. Until the one night the dreams changed.

It wasn't a nightmare per se, at least not like any of the other nightmares that had become a staple of Dean's sleeping hours over the years. No, this was more... disturbing than terrifying, though he'd had the feeling that it could slip into terrifying any second with the smallest of nudges.

It was about Cas, and Dean thought he might have willingly succumbed to the terrifying if it meant getting to see him again, even if it was just in a dream.

There wasn't much to it really, just Cas flying through a black void, shadows seeming to twist and flow menacingly overhead. It wasn't the visuals that made the dream disturbing; it was the atmosphere. The feeling that seemed to be sinking into Dean's very soul as he watched Castiel, significantly dressed as usual except for the trench coat, fly that the angel was the last spark of good in a mire of very bad, very horrible things. Not even evil, per se, just... horror.

The dream stayed with Dean when he woke up, and he found his thoughts kept going back to it time and time again during the day that followed.

Too much it seemed, as since over lunch in a rundown diner, Sam put down his fork and stared at him. "Alright, what gives?"

Dean shook off the memory of the dream and gave his brother an annoyed look as he picked up his burger. "What do you mean 'what gives'? We're talking about the case."

"We _were_ talking about the case," Sam corrected. "Five minutes ago. Then you checked out of the conversation in favor of staring out the window."

Dean blinked. Had he? "Sorry," he muttered, turning his gaze onto his food. "Just... thinking about something."

He tried to ignore Sam's expectant silence, and succeeded well enough that Sam sighed and asked exasperatedly, "Well?"

"Well what?"

"You going to share with the class what you were thinking about?" Sam's tone was such that Dean knew he was about half a second away from bitchfacing.

"It's nothing," he replied, and yep, there was the bitchface. Dean grinned, but smothered it quickly when bitchface intensity went up. "Really, Sammy, it is. Just had a weird dream last night that I'm having problems shaking off."

And just like that, Sam's bitchface transformed into brotherly concern. "Nightmare?"

"Sorta. Maybe. Yes. But not really." Dean made a face at himself. "It wasn't out and out nightmarish, not the usual Winchester horror show. Just..." He waved a hand, trailing off.

"Disturbing?" Sam suggested.

"Yeah." Dean took a bite of his burger and chewed it thoughtfully. Disturbing was the word for it all around.

"And?" Sam prompted after a moment.

"And what?"

Sam rolled his eyes expressively. "You going to tell me what was so disturbing about it?"

Dean eyed him in return. "You're going to keep pestering me until I do, aren't you?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Sam replied with just a hint of smugness.

Great. His brother was in a caring and sharing mood. Dean sighed. "It was nothing really. Just... Cas."

"You dreamt about Cas?" And now Sam was giving him the big Puppy Eyes of Sympathy. Great.

"Yeah." He took a big bite of his burger, hoping Sam would take the hint that he didn't want to talk about it and drop it.

Yeah, no such luck. "Was it... bad?" Sam asked hesitantly, and Dean was reminded that Cas had been Sam's friend as well. Not that he ever forgot that, precisely, but it was knowledge that tended to fade to the background most of the time.

"Not really," Dean replied grudgingly. "Except..." He trailed off and shook his head, deciding not to make Sam pull the details out of him one point at a time. "It was just... Cas. Flying."

"That's all?"

"Yeah. It was dark, Cas was the only thing I could see. Except..." Dean's voice had dropped in volume, and Sam leaned in to be able to keep hearing him. "There were... shadows. Don't know of what, just that they weren't good. But more than that..."

"Go on," Sam encouraged after a moment of silence. "What more?"

"It was just... this feeling, okay?" Dean stared down at his plate of food as he talked, knowing how he sounded. "Like something was waiting, something inhuman and incomprehensible. Like it was waiting in the dark, or more like it _was_ the dark. And it was waiting. Just biding its time. Like... Cas was the last bit of good and light in the world, and it was just waiting to smother him." He shrugged, doing his best to shake off the feelings. "Stupid, huh?"

"No," Sam told him. "Sounds like it was a hell of a nightmare."

Dean relaxed a little at Sam's calm acceptance. "Yeah, well, not like we're not both experts at living with nightmares now, huh? Sorry I've been so out of it today. It was just a dream."

"S'okay," Sam said, waving away the apology. "Do you want to take some time? The case can wait till tomorrow..."

"Nah." Dean gave himself a good mental shake and focused his attention back where it belonged -- on the hunt. "Gotta take this bastard out before it leads any more kids into the woods. Tell me what you got from the coroner again and I promise I'll pay attention."

Sam gave him one last concerned look before launching into the case details. Dean gave him his full attention, pushing the dream to the back of his mind, inoring it for now.

But he couldn't forget it. Not entirely.

*****

Angels did not tire easily, but tire they did if they kept at something for long enough. Castiel had no idea how long he'd been flying through this black abyss, but it was long enough for even an angel's stamina to begin to wane. Soon he was going to have to rest and the thought of stopping where the leviathan shadows would be able to find him was not one he relished.

So he gritted his teeth and kept flying long past the ends of his endurance and then kept flying some more.

Finally his persistence – stubbornness, Dean would have called it -- paid off. The blackness around him began to change, becoming less unending impenetrable darkness and more the darkness of a moonless night. There was a sky overhead and below him the welcome sight of actual ground, no matter how barren and black it was.

He landed, the action far less graceful than usual, and managed to keep moving through sheer willpower until he found a depression in the rocky ground. It was really too small to be called a cave, but Castiel managed to wedge himself into it regardless. He wasn't sure if it would be enough protection from the leviathans' regard if they decided to really look for him, but it was better than nothing.

After that, Castiel... drifted. It wasn't sleep -- angels didn't sleep -- but it was something similar, his mind going where it would undirected by him as he slowly rebuilt his energy stores.

Later on, he would reflect that he shouldn't have been surprised when his thoughts drifted to Dean, but at the time he was. The image of the hunter sprawled out on a motel bed, hands clutched around his pillow was so clear Castiel felt he could reach out and touch him. Indeed, he felt his fingers twitch in compulsion to do so. The only thing that restrained him was the knowledge that trying would only destroy the illusion that Dean was right in front of him.

And then the illusion stirred, raised its head and looked right at him. "Cas?" Dean said in a hoarse disbelieving whisper.

It couldn't be real. It couldn't... "You- You can see me?" Castiel ventured hesitantly.

Dean's eyes widened even more, and he shifted forward towards Castiel, but not reaching for him. "Yeah," he said, then cleared his throat and tried again. "Yeah, Cas, I can see you."

"How-" Castiel began but cut himself off, instead going with, "Are you alright?"

That made Dean's mouth quirk upwards into a small sad smile. "Yeah, Cas. I'm fine."

"Good," Castiel said, meaning it. That he had surmised that the Winchesters were alright was one thing, but having it confirmed, even by what may be a hallucination, was another thing entirely. A better thing. "I had confidence that you had survived, but..."

"It's nice to have it confirmed," Dean finished for him. "Yeah, I get that." He was staring at Castiel almost hungrily.

"And Sam?" Castiel asked, suddenly remembering exactly what he'd done to him. _I took down the wall in his mind. How could I...?_ "Is he-"

"Sammy's fine," Dean told him quickly. "He might be a little crazier than before, but he's dealing with it. Actually the kid's so well adjusted now, it's kinda freaky."

"I'm sorry, Dean," Castiel apologized. "I never should have-"

"No, you shouldn't have," Dean told him, but softened immediately. "But it's not like Sam and I have never done something we shouldn't have. It's forgiven."

Castiel felt something that had been screwed up too tightly inside him loosen at that. "I'm not sure I deserve it, but thank you."

"I'm sorry we weren't able to save you," Dean said, the look accompanying the words one of the most heartfelt Castiel had ever received from the human.

"You stopped the leviathan," Castiel said. "That is all I could ask." He glanced around him. "And I cannot say this is an inappropriate punishment for my transgressions. Some would probably even call it poetic."

Dean frowned at him. "What's poetic about being dead?"

"I don't think I am dead." Castiel paused, taking inner stock. When an angel died, their grace was scattered to all the corners of Heaven and Earth. His, on the other hand, felt very much still whole and intact.

"If you're not dead, then where are you?" Dean demanded.

"Purgatory."

"Purgatory?" Dean echoed. "How the hell- Oh crap. The Leviathan still had its tentacles wrapped around you, so when we sucked it back into the hole, you went with it. Dammit!"

He looked so distressed that Castiel wanted to make him feel better. "You couldn't have known."

"We should've. It was a rookie mistake." Dean got up off his bed and started pacing as he talked. "I mean the Big Bad tells us you're dead and we just believe him? 'cause they're oh so trustworthy after all. Shit, Cas, if we'd've known-"

"You would've done exactly the same thing," Castiel broke in. "Because you had to. The leviathan had to be stopped."

Dean grimaced, though he didn't deny it. "It still sucks."

Castiel glanced away from the image of Dean to the barren black landscape he was trapped in. "Yes," he agreed, speaking to the emptiness around him. "It does."

***** 

Sam was jolted from sleep by his brother shaking his shoulder.

"I just saw Cas," Dean said as soon as he saw that Sam was awake.

"What?" Still slightly sleep befuddled, Sam glanced around the room, half expecting to see the familiar trench-coated figure of the angel before he remembered he was dead.

"In a dream, dumbass," Dean snarked and was up and pacing the room like a caged tiger.

 _Oh._ So this wasn't a visit from the beyond, this was his brother having another nightmare, this time disturbing enough that he woke Sam up. Voluntarily. Putting on his most sympathetic expression, Sam asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Course I d-" Dean stopped mid-word as well as mid-stride and turned to glare at Sam. "Dude, this isn't about me having a bad dream. I saw Cas."

Sam was wishing he had some caffeine before having to have this conversation. "In a dream, you said."

"Yeah. An _angel_ dream. Y'know how they feel free to go traipsing about in a man's subconscious when they can't get you on the phone."

Sam had a vivid horrifying memory of Lucifer crawling through his dreams, long before his time in Hell had gifted him with a Lucifer of his very own riding around in his subconscious, and he knew that Dean had had more than one angel traipsing through his dreams over the years, but still...

"Are you sure? Couldn't it just have been a weird dream?"

"I know the difference between a weird dream and a real one, Sam!" Dean glared. "This was real. _He_ was real."

Right. It could still be wishful thinking on Dean's part, but Sam was inclined to believe him. "So Cas is alive?"

"Yeah. Maybe. Sorta. He's not gone at any rate. Just trapped."

Sam frowned. "Where?"

The look on Dean's face told him he wasn't going to like the answer even before he spoke. "Purgatory."

"Shit." It made sense though given the situation. If Cas wasn't dead, he'd at least been tangled up with the leviathan enough that he and Dean weren't able to reach him. So Cas getting pulled along with the leviathan when they managed to send the bastards back home wasn't that big a surprise.

"Yeah, pretty much my reaction too," Dean said, finally sitting down on the edge of his bed, looking haunted. "After everything that's happened, for Cas to end up locked up there with those things...."

There was really only one thing Sam could say to that. "So we go and get him out."

The look Dean shot him was relieved as much as anything. "No arguments about how playing around with Purgatory is way too dangerous and something only a freaking idiot would do?"

"I thought that was pretty much a given," Sam said with a shrug as he got up and reached for his clothes. "But it's Cas. He pulled you out of Hell, tried to do the same for me. We owe him. More than that, he's family."

"And everyone knows that the Winchesters are always idiots when it comes to family," Dean said, mouth quirking up into a half smile. "Thanks, Sammy."

"He's my friend too, Dean," Sam said honestly. He knew though that what lay between Dean and Cas was, to use the angel's words, much more profound than what lay between himself and Cas. Which was just another reason he wanted to get Cas back -- Dean had lost far too many people he cared about; if Sam could help him get one of them back he was going to do whatever it took.

***** 

Castiel wasn't sure how long he rested, his thoughts drifting aimlessly after the vision of Dean, but he finally pulled himself out of it and began moving again.

Now that there was ground, or at least a reasonable facsimile of same, he found himself strangely loathe to leave it until he knew how the rules worked around here. Besides, the leviathan were still far too close for him to wilfully risk doing anything that may increase the odds of them spotting him. Discretion for once, he thought, would be the better part of valour, so he kept his wings folded and struck out on foot.

It seemed to have been a wise choice because, after only walking for several hours, the landscape began to change, becoming more solid and less just a bare idea of one. The feeling of the leviathan looming overhead, while not disappearing, at least began to lessen as well. Castiel found his tension easing in response as the threat of imminent attack faded just that little bit.

He began to hear noises, claws clicking, scales slithering, growls and voices barely audible, all the things that always seemed to lurk in the fearful dark, and Castiel was reminded that the leviathan were not the only inhabitants of Purgatory.

The souls of monsters were here too, the souls that he had devoured and used for his own ends. Somehow he didn't think they would be any happier to see him than the leviathan would be, and Castiel folded his wings even closer to his body in an instinctual effort to make himself smaller and easier to hide.

The last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself. Any kind of fight he may get into held the possibility of alerting the leviathan to his presence and that... that would be unpleasant to say the least. So as other figures appeared in the landscape that Castiel was walking through, he kept his head down and power contained and shielded as much as he was able, pretending to be just another monster soul trapped here.

It wasn't difficult to pretend. In fact it was closer to the truth than he wanted to admit. He was most certainly trapped here, and after all that he had done, the title 'monster' fit him better than angel.

Maybe he was where he belonged after all.

*****

Sam carefully drew the sigil on the dirt floor of the cabin cellar while Dean stood nearby with their packs of weapons and supplies and fidgeted nervously.

"You sure this is going to work?" he asked for at least the tenth time. Sam would've been more annoyed about it if he didn't know exactly how anxious and worried about Cas his brother was.

"Pretty sure," he answered just as he had all those other times. "The spell and the recipe for crafting the amulets are from the same book as the ritual we used to open Purgatory and suck the Leviathan back home in the first place. If that worked, stands to reason this will too."

Dean nodded, just as he had the previous times they'd had this conversation. Sam mentally counted to five and right on cue, Dean asked his usual followup question. "And this isn't going to mess with the barrier? We're not going to weaken it or anything passing through it like this?"

Privately Sam wondered if it would make a difference if he said yes and rather suspected it wouldn't. Not when it came to rescuing one of their own. And that held for him as much as it did for Dean; after all, Cas had taken the risk to brave Lucifer's cage to get him out. Even if he hadn't -- totally – succeeded, the thought and the intent had been there and Sam could do no less but try and return the favor.

Luckily, they weren't risking opening the world to the leviathan again at least. "Nope," he replied. "The barrier is like a lock and the amulets are the keys. You don't weaken a lock by using a key do you?"

"No, but you do open it," Dean muttered.

Finishing the sigil, Sam stood and walked over to his brother. "This is going to work," he told him, projecting as much calm confidence as he could. "I know what we're doing. Trust me, okay?"

Dean let out a breath. "I do, Sam," he replied. "It's just... it's Cas, y'know?"

"I know," Sam said with a sympathetic smile. They'd lost so much in the last year, and it had hit Dean even harder than it had hit him. The chance to get Cas back must seem like almost too much to hope for to his brother. Even if Cas hadn't been his friend as well Sam would've been determined to do this, if just to give his brother that hope. "I promise, Dean, we're going to get him back." He handed one of the amulets to his brother, put on another and put the third -- the one he made for Cas -- in his pocket. "You ready?"

Dean shook himself, put on the amulet and then settled his pack on his shoulders, handing the other to Sam who did the same. "As I'll ever be. Let's get this show on the road."

Sam centered himself, then spoke the words that would open the portal. Magic seemed to hang heavy in the air for a moment, then the air above the sigil wavered and seemed to part, showing a curtain of shimmering black... something.

He turned to Dean. "Ready?"

Dean nodded, stepping up to stand beside him. "Here goes nothing," he said, and side by side they stepped through the portal.

*****

They hit hard, and Dean instinctively tucked and rolled to avoid injury. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sam doing the same.

Dean got his feet under him as soon as he could, hand on his gun as he looked around at their new surroundings.

It was dark like a moonless night, only somehow the dark felt thicker than that, more substantial, like maybe it should be hard to breathe though it didn't seem to be. Not yet at least.

After a moment or two Dean's eyes adjusted enough that he could make out more than just darkness. It appeared that he and Sam were standing in the middle of a highway bordered on both sides by scrub and bushes and not much else. It was such a prosaic scene that, if it wasn't for the oppressiveness of the dark, Dean would've doubted that they'd actually made it to Purgatory.

He didn't doubt it though -- nowhere on Earth would just the feeling of the air make his skin crawl.

"So," Sam remarked, head swiveling to look behind them back down the road they were standing on. "You think this road leads to a garden, like the one in Heaven did?"

"Only if it's a garden infested with leviathan," Dean said. "What is it with afterlives and highways anyway? Don't we get enough of those in the real world?"

"That's probably why," Sam answered with a shrug. "Purgatory, Heaven, Hell, they're made up of as much thought as substance so they're always going to appear as something familiar."

"Makes sense, I guess," Dean admitted. "Guess we should count ourselves lucky we're just getting roads then and not some of the more... extreme landscapes in our heads." Like Hell.

"Yeah." Sam walked a few steps up the road, then turned and walked a few steps in the opposite direction. "Though some sign posts would be nice. I have no idea where we are or which direction Cas is in."

Dean snorted. "What, you were hoping for a sign with an arrow that said, 'One Wayward Angel, 5 miles'?"

"I'd settle for some clue as to which way to start looking in. This is going to take a long time if we have to search the entire dimension."

"Agreed," Dean said, but even as he spoke, he found himself looking in one specific direction, the direction his gut was telling him was the right one.

Sam was frowning at him. "What is it?"

"Cas is that way," Dean replied, pointing down the road.

"You sure?"

"Yeah." He frowned, not sure how he knew, but he could practically feel it in his bones, as certain as if there _had_ been a sign pointing the way.

"Let's go then," Sam said, beginning to walk in the direction Dean indicated.

Dean fell in step with him automatically. "That's it?" he asked. "No questions about how I know or anything?"

Sam shrugged. "I figured it's probably part of the same thing that let Cas reach your dreams from Purgatory. He always said you two share a bond. Maybe that bond's giving you a kind of angel radar for him. Anyway, it's better than wandering aimlessly."

"True," Dean admitted, turning the whole situation over in his mind. Did he have Cas-dar? And did it bother him if he did? No, he decided. Profound bond or not, if whatever this was let them rescue Cas from this place, the only thing he'd be was grateful.

*****

Castiel kept his eyes focused on his feet and his wings pulled in tight against his back as he passed another group of creatures.

The further he went from the abyss where he started, the more populated it seemed to be, and the harder it became to stay hidden. In fact he'd given up on staying out of sight altogether as impracticable and had switched to the 'hide in plain sight' method instead.

This involved moving as if he knew where he was going, acting like he belonged here, and hoping no one would look at him and think 'angel'. The fact that he himself had seen a few species he couldn't name bolstered his confidence in the last. With so many different varieties of creatures he doubted 'angel' would be the first thing that would pop into anybody's head when they looked at him.

Or at least so long as he did nothing to put the idea into their heads. Which meant all displays of what Dean would have called his 'angel mojo' were off the table for now and for the foreseeable future.

Dean.

It came as no surprise at all to Castiel that Dean kept popping up in his train of thought. Not after the dream, vision, hallucination, whatever it had been. Wishful thinking maybe, though for some reason Castiel didn't think so. There was something about it that had felt real, that he had actually managed to somehow connect with Dean and have one last conversation. He didn't know how or why, but was grateful for it nonetheless. It was a moment of light he could call on in the midst of all this dark around him.

The way sound carried here was strange, reminding Castiel of nothing so much as a confused mixture of random prayers and the background noise from the Host. It was almost familiar and therefore something of a comfort in this ever changing, ever strange place. He let the disjointed words and snippets of conversations wash over him as he walked, not trying to listen to any one in particular so much as letting it all blend together and so create at least a vague impression of the whole.

At least until he caught the word "Winchesters" in the middle of the cacophony.

It stopped him dead in his tracks, head cocked to the side as he tried to trace that one voice and one conversation. It probably wasn't even about _his_ Winchesters, he thought as he searched, if he hadn't misheard entirely. He'd just been thinking about Dean after all, and it was very possible his mind had used that to try and make sense of the voices all around him. After all, there was no reason that the Winchesters would be the subject of idle conversation in Purgatory, was there?

On second thought, it was Sam and Dean he was thinking about...

"-course I'm damn sure," Castiel heard the voice say when he honed in on it again. "I not only have his scent, I drained him of blood and turned him myself."

Another voice laughed disdainfully. "And how did that work out for you?"

"That's not the point," the first replied. "The point is I can sense and track him if he's anywhere remotely near and I'm telling you that Dean Winchester is here in Purgatory."

Castiel froze completely at that. Dean, _here_?

"Boris is right," a new voice came. "Winchester's here. And so's his freak of a brother. I was hunting them since before I was turned; there's no way they can hide from me."

Not only Dean, but Sam as well? For a brief moment, Castiel wondered what kind of bad luck would have thrown the two brothers into Purgatory, but then he realized why they had to be here. Him. That hadn't been a comforting hallucination. He really had somehow made contact with Dean and told him where he was. And Dean being Dean was never going to just let that lie. He was going to try and get Castiel back. And Sam being Sam, he was going to be right at his brother's side as they put their latest suicidal plan into action.

Only this time, it wasn't to save the world, or each other -- which as far as they were concerned pretty much amounted to the same thing. This time it was to save the hide of a worthless angel who was only getting what he deserved.

What Castiel didn't deserve was friends like the Winchesters.

"Fine, let's say you convinced me," the voice that had laughed said. "The Winchesters are here. Just what do you want to do about it?"

The one called Boris laughed in return. "Just what do you think? It'll be interesting to see what happens to two humans when we rip them apart here. Think they'll have a shot at making it to heaven?"

"Hell's more likely for those two," the third voice spoke up again. "Always assuming we can't tear about their souls as well as their bodies here."

"There's an idea," Boris said. "String 'em up and take them apart nice and slow. Think of the entertainment value."

"If you want maximum entertainment value -- bleed them drop by drop, while you make the other watch. Those two are so codependent, that they'll freak out more about each other dying, even if they're dying themselves."

"I like the way you think, Gordon," Boris said. "You've got a really creative mind when it comes to torture, especially for someone who was a hunter for so long."

"I've always been creative in interrogation techniques," Gordon replied. "Just the targets that have changed now."

Without really realizing it, Castiel had been drifting in the direction of the voices since they first mentioned the Winchesters and he now found himself in the midst of a dense clump of trees. The voices were louder, closer here, and Castiel could see light coming from a clearing on the other side of the foliage.

In the clearing were a number of beings -- vampires, Castiel recognized after a moment's observation -- standing in a loose circle, watching the two in the center debate.

"Probably a good thing," one of them -- Boris -- was saying. "You wouldn't have wanted to put your creativity up against mine if we'd met back then. It would've got... messy."

The other vampire -- Gordon, Castiel presumed – merely smirked in response. "It sure would've. But you would've been the messee not the messer."

Boris gave Gordon a grin that was much more a bearing of teeth than a sign of pleasure. "Perhaps we should dance one of these days, just to see what would happen."

"Any time you want to boogie you know where to find me," Gordon said spreading his arms in a come and get me gesture.

"I'll put your name on my dance card, right after the Winchesters," Boris replied.

Gordon nodded, hands dropping back to his side. "Agreed. We need to deal with them first. Can't let this opportunity go to waste."

Castiel was caught on the horns of a dilemma. These blood drinkers were going to go after Sam and Dean, who were only here in the line of fire because of him. He didn't doubt that Boris, Gordon and the others would find taking down the brothers more difficult than they were anticipating, but the chance that they could get lucky still remained. Unless....

Unless someone stopped the vampires before they could start. Someone like him.

It would blow his laying low to smithereens, and almost certainly would bring more trouble down on him, perhaps even more than he could handle, but Castiel found he didn't care. He'd failed his friends enough. He wouldn't do so again.

Taking a deep breath that he didn't need, Castiel let his grace unfurl slightly, doing the same with his wings. He pushed through the brush hiding him and was about to step into the clearing when he was grabbed from behind.

*****

"Y'know," Dean grumbled as they walked down the apparently endless deserted highway, "if we're going to keep getting roads in all these afterlife dimensions, it would be nice if we could get a car too."

Sam glanced sideways at him. "Wait, didn't you have the impala in Heaven?"

"When I first got there, yeah," Dean admitted. "But then it disappeared, and it was all me wearing toddler fashions and dead hunters dressed up like Mexican wrestlers."

There was a lot about their trip to Heaven that Sam didn't want to remember or dwell on, but there were a few things that were worth poking at. Especially when Dean was the one to bring them up. "I don't know," Sam said as casually as he could manage. "I thought the 'Wuv Hugs' t-shirt was a good look for you."

"Shut up," Dean shot back. "Or I'll 'Wuv Hugs' you."

Sam raised an eyebrow. As threats went, it was lacking something. "Really? You'll 'Wuv Hugs' me? That's the best you can do?"

Dean gave him a dirty look. "Well, I'm gonna kick your ass from here to Hell and back kinda loses something when we're standing in Purgatory, so I'm improvising."

"Point."

"Believe me, to 'Wuv Hugs' someone is truly, truly, horrible. You don't want the details. Trust me."

"If you say so, Dean." Sam didn't try very hard to hide his smirk.

"Oh, bite me!"

Sam chuckled and then they fell silent again as they continued walking. He resisted the urge to glance at his watch; time didn't seem to work right here any more than it did in Heaven or Hell, and no matter what the watch told him, it didn't change the fact that it felt like they'd been walking for days. There was still no sign of Cas beyond the feeling that Dean had dubbed his Cas-dar, and like it or not, Sam was starting to feel a few doubts creep in. Not enough to make him mention them to Dean yet, but enough to make him worry about what would happen if they couldn't find the angel. Not just for Cas' sake, but for Dean's too.

The whole thing with Castiel and the leviathan had hit Dean hard, harder than he'd ever admit. But Sam knew his brother, and he could see the wound losing the angel had left, especially the way it had happened. He honestly didn't think anything other than losing their parents, and Bobby, and Sam himself had hurt Dean so much, and it wasn't something he'd dealt with easily.

Truth be told, Sam didn't think he'd really had dealt with it so much as shoved it down with all the other emotional baggage he didn't so much deal with as just pretend didn't exist, with equal parts alcohol and self-hate making up his denial. And now that it seemed they had a chance to get the angel back...

Well, he didn't think he was going to be able to get Dean to leave without finding at least some sign of Cas. And, if Sam was honest, he would be hard pressed to leave himself. He might not have been as close to Castiel as Dean was, but the angel was still his friend.

Beside him, Dean came to a sudden stop, throwing up a hand in a gesture for quiet before Sam could ask any questions.

Sam gave it a count of twenty as he watched his brother frown and peer into the shadows along the road before he finally asked softly, "What is it?"

"Don't know," Dean replied equally softly, still frowning. "Thought I heard..."

"What?"

"Someone calling my name."

They both fell silent again, listening. Sam held his breath, but all he heard was the wind.

Dean finally sighed and shook his head. "Nothing now. Maybe this place is just getting to me."

"Or maybe something's messing with us," Sam countered. That would be what he'd put money on, if they were betting. Because something was _always_ messing with them.

"Maybe." Dean dropped his hand to where he had his colt tucked into his waistband, not drawing it, but keeping ready.

Sam touched his shoulder gently, urging him back into movement. "Come on. Either way, we should keep going."

"Yeah," Dean agreed as they started down the road again. "It's not like Cas is going to find himself, after all."

They continued on in silence, but after a few minutes Sam saw Dean start again and before he could ask he heard in the wind what sounded like just the wrong side of comprehensible whispers.

"Hear that?" Dean asked in a low voice as his eyes darted back and forth, trying to take in all the shadows along the road at once.

Sam nodded, reaching for his own gun as he scanned their surroundings for anything as well. But as far as he could make out there was nothing but shadows and whispered murmurings.

"This sucks," Dean grumbled as they both slowly began moving forward again, when the mysterious whispers didn't manifest as anything more concrete or obviously dangerous.

"No arguments," Sam agreed.

"Something's definitely messing with us," Dean said, looking almost offended at the notion.

Sam thought he heard a slightly louder voice hiss sibilantly, "Winchesterrrrrr..." and couldn't help but jump a little. "Again, no arguments."

Without consulting on it, the brothers shifted positions so that each one of them was responsible for scanning one side of the road as they continued to walk. For a while there was nothing but the whispers, now occasionally punctuated by laughs and growls and what sounded like their names being called, which would be enough to send shivers down anybody's spine, and Sam found he was no exception.

They were moving faster now, keeping their backs mostly to each other, both of them with guns drawn as they continued to scan the shadows along the road. The there and gone glints of eyes continued flickering in the dark, as did the whispers in the wind. The sounds became louder and the flashes of eyes more frequent and they found themselves unconsciously quickening their pace in response, as if instinctively trying to outrun it all.

Then, suddenly, it all stopped. There was nothing but black shadows showing on either side of the road, nothing but silence ringing in their ears, with even the wind having fallen still. Sam and Dean glanced sideways at each other, the tension ratcheting up to the snapping point. As one, they slowed but did not stop and got a tighter grip on their weapons. If this wasn't just an exercise in driving them crazy and something was actually going to happen, Sam thought, now was when it would.

Sure enough, a group of people stepped out of the shadows and onto the road about twenty feet in front of them. No, Sam thought as he got a good look at their features, not people. A group of ghouls. Led by the two who had tried to eat him and who _had_ eaten Adam and his mother, whose faces they still wore even here.

"Sam and Dean Winchester," the thing that looked like their brother said, grinning at them with a truly wicked delight. "It's such a surprise to see you. No one -- and I mean _no one_ \-- expected you to be stupid enough to come _here_ of all places."

"What can I say?" Dean replied with a smirk. "The brochures made it sound like a real happening vacation spot." He looked totally at ease though Sam knew he had to be as tense as he himself was.

"Funny," not-Adam said. "You're not fooling anyone with your comedy routine, you know. You can posture and crack jokes all you want, but you know and we know exactly how much crap you've stepped in by coming here."

"Or you only think you know," Dean shot back. "We took you down once. We can do it again." He looked and sounded completely confident, but Sam knew his brother's version of bravado when he saw it.

It looked like not-Adam did too. "You keep telling yourselves that," he said with a smile. "We'll see if you can still believe it when we're eating your liver while you watch."

The atmosphere changed, becoming more charged and deadly. Sam tightened his hold on his gun, knowing that any second now it was going to go from words to a fight that they stood very little chance of winning. Dean exchanged a quick look with him and Sam saw the same knowledge in his brother's eyes, and the same determination. If they were going to go down, they were going to take as many of these sons of bitches with them as they could.

Just as the tension was reaching the snapping point and Sam could see the ghouls in the front of the group start to shift their weight in prelude to attacking, a huge roar split the air, followed by alarmed cries from the ghouls at the back of the pack, cries that were abruptly cut off.

Sam strained his neck as he tried to see what was going on as the rest of the ghouls turned seemingly intent on the same thing. Another roar and another cry cut off mid-scream and the ghouls began to back away, slowly at first and then faster as they scattered and scrambled to get away from... whatever it was. Sam still couldn't see through the now fleeing mob of panicked ghouls.

Finally though his line of sight cleared enough for him to catch a glimpse at what had sent the ghouls fleeing.

It was about the size of a small horse, clearly reptilian, scales bright green and blue and orange like the plumage on a parrot. It crouched over the prone unmoving bodies of several of the ghouls, the long claws on its feet sunk straight through their skulls. Its long barbed tail was moving sinuously behind it as watched the rest of the ghouls run away with something that might have been a smile on a face a little more human. Something with less fangs and forked tongue.

Sam was starting to think that maybe the ghouls had the right idea here when the creature's attention shifted and its bright yellow eyes focused clearly on him and Dean.

"Dude, do you have any idea what the hell that thing is?" Dean asked in low urgent tones, his own gaze still trained on the creature.

Sam started to give a half shrug, thought better of the movement as its focus seemed to sharpen and remained very very still instead. "Hopefully not hungry?" he replied out of the side of his mouth.

The creature seemed to have not only heard him, but understood and found it amusing as the impression of a smile increased and it gave a kind of hooting sound that might have been laughter.

"It's laughing at us," Sam observed.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign."

"It's a sign that Tallis has a bad sense of humor," came an amused -- and strangely familiar feminine voice from the shadows along the side of the road. Sam tore his eyes from the creature to look in the voice's direction, only to freeze in shock as the speaker stepped into the light.

 _Madison_.

She was just as Sam remembered her from that first day before they'd found out about what she was, all dark hair, warm eyes, teasing smile and curves in all the right places. It was how he'd prefer to remember her instead of how he saw her later, crying, in pain and begging him to end her life, a request he'd had no choice but to grant.

"Hello, Sam." Her eyes flickered briefly over to his brother. "Dean." Then it was right back to looking at him. "It's good to see you."

Every instinct Sam told him she really meant it. It looked like, just maybe, even in the monster afterlife, they might have some allies.

***** 

Castiel pushed the hands away that had grabbed him and spun around, his own hands raised ready to smite-

Only to freeze when he saw who it was.

"Lenore, isn't it?" he asked, slowly letting his hands drop. She looked different than the last time he'd seen her, when she'd been all scared and anxious, hanging onto her sanity and her own will by her fingernails, covered in grime from hiding in a basement in a way she hadn't been able to hide from the voices in her head. Now she was clean and put together, and while her expression was worried, she also seemed calm and confident.

Lenore nodded. "And you're Cas. And you don't want to do what you were just about to."

Castiel frowned at that. "They are planning-"

"-to go after the Winchesters," Lenore finished for him. "I know." She gave a mostly humourless smile. "It's not every day someone breaches the barriers on Purgatory. It creates waves. They couldn't have announced their presence any more if they'd arranged for a dimension wide loudspeaker to repeat 'The Winchesters have arrived, film at 11' over and over. And they're hunters -- notorious ones at that. Of course there's going to be all kinds of monsters going after them for revenge, or bragging rights, or just because they're bored."

"That is why I must stop them," Castiel said implacably, while somewhere inside he was reeling at what Sam and Dean had done to come after him. He was so very much not worth the risks they were taking. Which just made him all the more determined to not let them suffer for it.

"Everyone is up in arms and on high alert right now," Lenore told him, voice low and demanding to be heard. "You start throwing around the kind of power you were about to and you'll draw the attention of all sorts of things. Big things. Hungry things. Things that would just love to have an angel for breakfast." She glanced upwards to the space above them that seemed to be the sole domain of the leviathan.

In spite of himself, Castiel had to restrain the urge to shiver at that. But his fear wasn't enough to get him to back down. "I will not put my own safety above my friends," he said with as much dignity -- and warning -- as he could manage.

Lenore gave him a strangely assessing look at that before seeming to relax a little. "There's better ways to keep them safe than making yourself a bigger target. Come on."

She began to move away, but Castiel stayed where he was. "Where are you proposing I should go?"

Lenore looked back over her shoulder at him. "To find the Winchesters and convince them that they need to get the hell out of Purgatory before every monster with an axe to grind descends on them."

For a moment longer, Castiel hesitated. The thought of seeing Sam and Dean -- especially Dean -- again made something ache in a not altogether unpleasant manner, but after everything he had done, it was not something he felt he deserved. Still, he knew the brothers and knew that if they had indeed come here after him they could be counted on to stubbornly refuse to leave until they had found him, no matter the danger to themselves. So if he wanted them safe, he was going to have to deal with this head on even if it was the last thing he felt he deserved.

"You know where they are?" he asked Lenore, watching her intently.

"I can find them, yes." Her mouth turned up at the corners in a barely there smile. "Like I said, they didn't exactly sneak their way in. The trick will be getting to them first."

"Alright," Castiel said, making his decision and falling into step beside her. "We best get moving then."

They began walking, Lenore leading them into what looked like deeper woods. Castiel watched her, wondering if he should be worried she was leading him into a trap. He didn't think so, his instincts said he could trust her, but with the many bad decisions he'd made lately, he wasn't sure if he should trust his instincts either.

Lenore kept casting sideways glances his way. "What?" she said finally.

It wasn't the first time his staring had made someone uncomfortable, but for once he didn't care that he was. "Why are you doing this?"

She was quiet for a moment before answering. "Because Sam and Dean are good people. They don't deserve what will happen to them if they don't get out of here." She glanced sideways at him again. "Neither do you."

"No!" Castiel stiffened and found himself shaking his head in denial before he made a conscious decision how to react. "I'm not- I don't-" He closed his eyes briefly and tried to gather his thoughts enough to speak in complete sentences. "You're right about Sam and Dean. Whatever happens, in the end they will make the right -- the good -- decision. But I... The decisions I've made, the things I've done, the damage I've caused... I deserve the worst this place could do to me. More, I deserve not to exist."

Lenore gave him another assessing look before saying, "If you really believed that, you wouldn't have been hiding in the bushes listening to a pack of vampires. You would have been heading for the Dark at the Center where _they_ live."

"The leviathan you mean."

"Yes. Anyone around here who really wants to end it all, that's where they go. Nothing can survive the leviathan hunger in its true form when it's turned on them." She gave him a faint ghost of a smile. "Not even an angel's grace."

"I know," Castiel said quietly, remembering the feel of them inside as they beat against the barriers he'd put up to contain them with that unending, overwhelming hunger. He suppressed another shiver at the memory.

"The fact that you're here and not there means that there's something in you that still wants to fight," Lenore told him. "You're not ready to give up your existence, even if you're not entirely sure why." She gave a half shrug. "Same as me."

Castiel thought about that as they continued to walk. It was true that even though he may think he deserved for his existence to end, he didn't _want_ it to, and he felt obliged to consider the reasons why.

At the heart of it, he decided, was the fact that if he ceased to exist, he could not make reparations for the wrongs he had caused either by enduring punishment for it, which was his first inclination, especially on finding himself here, or by trying to find a way to make up for everything. The latter would be far more difficult -- probably impossible if he remained in Purgatory -- but more... just in the end. As well as satisfying. After all, his wilfully submitting himself to punishment wouldn't do anything to alleviate the damage he caused to the world or to his friends. Or to Dean.

They all troubled him, but he found that the last troubled him the most. Dean was such a wonderful, bright, soul who had been forced to endure so much hardship and pain, the fact that Castiel had inadvertently piled more of both on the man was one of his biggest regrets. Dean didn't deserve any of it and if Castiel could do anything to fix what he had broken, no matter what it took, it was well worth doing.

If that involved not only finding Sam and Dean and getting them to leave, but allowing them to rescue him at the same time -- and Castiel believed he knew how Dean's mind worked enough to think that it most certainly would -- then that would be what he did. He wasn't certain if Dean would want anything more to do with him beyond that, but Castiel would, as they said, cross that bridge when he came to it and just hope it wasn't on fire at the time. He would do whatever Dean wanted -- leave or stay.

Some tiny part of his grace buried deeply under self recriminations and guilt glowed a little brighter at the thought of Dean asking him to stay.

*****

Dean scowled as he ducked under another low hanging branch. They may be better hidden traipsing through the creepy forest, but it was a lot easier going when they were following the road. The fact that he kept having to restrain himself from looking over his shoulder for rogue wendigo or something wasn't help improve his mood any either.

Also not helping was that weird innate sense of Castiel he seemed to have acquired when they came here. He supposed it was probably a good thing that it was getting stronger -- assuming that meant they were getting closer to finding the angel -- but in the meantime it was like an itch on the inside of his skull that he couldn't scratch.

He glanced ahead where Sam was walking alongside Madison -- who was being their guide now as much as Dean's Cas-dar was -- and talking quietly. He was glad he couldn't actually hear what they were talking about as he figured there was no way that conversation could be anything but painfully awkward, considering their history. What did you say to a girl that you slept with, who got turned into a werewolf that you then had to kill? Dean figured that small talk just wasn't going to cut it in that kind of situation.

But after some initial discomfort and stops and starts, Sam and Madison had seemed to settle into conversation far more easily -- and happily -- than Dean would have thought possible. It was weird, but if it wasn't giving Sam something new to traumatize and be broody about, the more power to them.

Dean knew he was concentrating on the terrain and on Sam and Madison and everything else he could think of because if he didn't actively keep distracting himself, he was going to just end up thinking about Cas, whether he wanted to or not.

Well, thinking about Cas _more_ because even with all the distractions he could throw at himself, he found his thoughts going back to the angel every 30 seconds or so.

It was just... with everything that had happened, Dean wasn't sure what he should be thinking -- or, more to the point, _feeling_ \-- about Cas now.

Oh, some of it was easy -- he was glad that Cas wasn't _gone_ , determined to reach him before anything else could happen, and scared that they might not make it, though that fear was fading the closer they got. And yeah, he was still hurt and angry over all the incredibly bad choices Cas had made that had got them all to this place. Though, again, those feelings had faded a lot over time and thinking Cas was dead and gone. Dean wasn't sure if finding out Cas wasn't meant those feelings would -- or even should -- be resurrected as well, and he didn't think he'd be able to figure that out until he was face to face with Cas again.

But beyond that, there were even greater questions about how he felt about Cas, questions that went back a lot farther than the whole leviathan mess.

Cas had been his friend -- was still his friend? In his darker moments he had wondered, but if the answer wasn't yes, at the very least he wanted it to be.

But there was more -- there had always been more -- between them than just friendship. Cas had said once that they shared a profound bond and there was more truth to that than Dean had ever been willing to admit. Somehow Cas had wormed his way into a position in Dean's heart that was only rivalled by the one Sam held.

Cas was family in all the ways that counted, unquestioningly. Including, apparently, the Winchester penchant to let good intentions lead to devastatingly bad decisions. Hopefully it would also include the managing to come back from said bad decision against all odds as well.

It remained to be seen whether Cas fit in Dean's family as another brother, like Sam, or as something else. Something more. Dean thought it might be the latter, and if he was honest with himself, after everything that had happened, he wanted that something more. Or at least the chance at it -- even if every other time he'd tried to pursue something like that it had blown up in his face.

Things with Cas though had already blown up in his face, so maybe that meant they'd actually be able to make it work? Whatever form 'it' ended up taking, Dean wasn't going to count his angels before they were rescued.

All he was sure of was that whatever happened, he wanted Cas in his life in some shape or form. If that shape or form involved personal space issues and maybe even some naked touching, that would be okay with him.

Sam said something to Madison and fell back to walk beside Dean. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

Dean raised an eyebrow at that, wondering exactly what kind of expression he'd been projecting. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?" he said, deflecting instead of answering. "I'm not the one who's been talking with a dead former lover that I had to kill because she was a werewolf." The fact that that probably wasn't the strangest conversation Sam had ever had said a lot about the absolute crazy that was their lives.

Sam shrugged. "We're good, actually. Madison's doing well. I mean, Purgatory's not exactly Heaven, but she's got friends and a place for herself, and we know that even Heaven is kinda fucked up so..."

"That's good," Dean said, meaning it. He hadn't known Madison as well as Sam had -- obviously -- but he had liked what he saw of her and had hated the end they'd all been forced to.

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "And you trying to change the subject isn't going to make me forget you haven't answered my question." _Damn_. Sam nudged Dean's shoulder with his own. "You've been awfully quiet. How are you doing?"

"The wyvern's not the greatest of conversationalists, and I didn't want to butt in on your tête-à-tête with the girl," Dean said with a shrug. "Besides, wouldn't you be more worried if I started talking to thin air?"

Sam gave a faint smile. "It would depend on what you were saying I think."

"Point." Then, because Sam's patience deserved some kind of answer, Dean added, "Just, y'know, thinking about Cas."

"We're going to find him, Dean," Sam reassured him immediately, so fast and sure that it pulled an involuntary smile out of Dean.

"I know," he said. "I was thinking more about what happens after we find him and get us all the hell out of here."

Sam nodded. "Ah." He paused for a moment before asking, "What did you come up with?"

"Well, first I'm pretty sure there's going to have to be one of those awkward sharing feelings conversations that always happen after someone accidentally almost ends the world." He glanced sideways at his brother. "And I can't tell you how wrong it is that those are kinda becoming a habit."

"Better that than the awkward conversations that happen when you do end the world," Sam pointed out.

"Point. But yeah, awkward or not, it needs to be had. Clear the air and all. And then..." Dean trailed off, still not exactly sure what he wanted to happen with Cas then.

"And then?" Sam prompted after a moment had passed and he still hadn't continued.

Dean shrugged. "We'll see what we'll see." He had to trust that as long as Cas was safe and well, the rest would work itself out.

The thought was more zen that Dean was used to having, but it felt right, a certain calm and peace seeming to settle over him. It took him a heartbeat or two to realize it wasn't just his thoughts, but the fact that the weird awareness of Cas he'd had since coming here had grown so much stronger it had smothered out all of his doubts.

Dean lifted his head like a dog scenting the air just as they stepped out of the woods into a small clearing. "Wait," he said, raising a hand as he slowed to a stop.

Sam, Madison and the wyvern all followed his lead. "What is it?" Sam asked as he looked around cautiously.

"Cas," Dean replied, suddenly aware that the angel was just feet away. He turned and stared unerringly at a spot at the far side of the clearing and counted the heartbeats he could hear pounding in his ears. By the time he reached three, Castiel had stepped out into the open.

*****

As Castiel followed Lenore ever deeper into the wooded landscape and ever further away from the void where the leviathan swam, he began to feel something that was both completely new and tantalizingly familiar at the same time. Not exactly a calm, but more... a light? A direction? Like he was heading towards something... if not good, at least _necessary_.

He abruptly realized that the last time he'd felt like this had been when he'd been in Hell, trying to rescue Dean. While he was still trying to process that realization and wondering why he was feeling the same way here and now, he stepped into a clearing and saw Dean standing on the other side of it.

 _Oh._

Castiel was aware that there were other people in the clearing as well, but for that moment his entire being seemed focused on Dean. He stopped and stared at the human ( _his_ human some deeply secret part of him whispered in the back of his mind), unable to do more than just drink in his presence. He'd never thought he'd see his friend again, at least in anything more than dreams. He found himself almost afraid to move in case it shattered the reality of this moment and Dean's actually being here.

At first Dean seemed just as frozen as he was, staring across the clearing at him with eyes and expression full of some emotion that Castiel didn't feel qualified to put a name to. But before things could start to feel awkward, Dean was striding across the clearing with purpose, not stopping until he was directly in front of Castiel, wrapping his arms tightly around the angel in the kind of hug that Castiel had believed was only reserved for Sam.

It took a moment for Castiel to do something more than just stand perfectly still and be hugged, since it was an entirely new experience for him, cupids notwithstanding. But eventually he raised his arms and hesitantly wrapped them around Dean in return, still a little leery that he would somehow do this wrong.

But the way Dean's arms tightened even more in response told him that he had instead got something very right. He let out a small sigh -- of relief, of contentment; it was hard for him to say as his emotions were still all muddled and confused -- and let his head drop to Dean's shoulder for a brief moment.

Finally, at some unheard signal, Dean released him and took a step back. "It's good to see you again, Cas," he said with a strange lopsided smile and a gaze full of far too much.

It sent more of those confused warm feelings through Castiel at the same time it made him feel even more guilty. "You shouldn't have come, Dean," he told him. "I'm not worth the risk you're taking."

Dean gave him a brief glare. "Of course you're worth the risk. You're _family_." The word was said as if it meant everything and given what Castiel knew about how Dean worked, that was pretty much the truth. It humbled him to know that Dean still thought about him that way.

"Thank you," he replied. "After everything I did, I know I don't deserve such regard from you, but-"

"That's a load of bullcrap, Cas," Dean told him, cutting him off mid-sentence. "Yeah, you screwed up, but it's not like Sam and I haven't screwed up just as big. Just makes you more of a Winchester, really, because when we screw up the world literally tries to end. But then we buckle down, grit our teeth and find a way to fix it. And we did. Well, almost. Won't be entirely fixed until we get you out of here..."

"Speaking of which," Sam said, coming up to them and looking over his shoulder at the surrounding shadows, "we should probably get a move on before things get... complicated." He turned to face them at the end of his sentence and reached out to squeeze Castiel's shoulder companionably. "Hi, Cas."

"Hello, Sam," Castiel replied, having the same mixed feelings about him, if not quite as deep or confusing. "It is good to see you as well, even if the location is less than desirable."

"Well, let's blow this joint for somewhere less monstery," Dean said, then glanced over to where Lenore had joined a...wyvern and a werewolf if Castiel wasn't mistaken. "No offence, ladies."

"None taken," Lenore said. "None of you belong here, not like us."

"And if we tried to go back, we'd end up ghosts as well as monsters," the werewolf added. "Better to just make the most of the afterlife we've got." The wyvern growled softly in agreement.

"You do have a plan to get out of here?" Castiel asked because, while he didn't think the Winchesters stupid, they did occasionally run in where angels -- in some cases literally -- feared to tread without thinking things through.

"Same way we got here," Sam said, even as Dean pulled two amulets out of his jacket and put one on. "Through the portal we sent the leviathan back here through -- and you too, I guess. Sorry about that."

Castiel waved away the apology. "Even if it wasn't no less than I deserved, saving the world far outranks saving one very foolish angel."

"Not as much as you might think," Dean told him sternly. "Besides, we saved the world already, now it's the foolish angel's turn."

"Wait," Castiel said, frowning as he worked through the implications of what Sam had said. "If you're using the same portal that banished the leviathan, and are going to open it from this side... isn't there a chance that they could do the same?"

"Nope," Dean answered. "Cause the lock on it is more like a forcefield than a door. You can only pass through it if you have the key." He held up the amulet, the movement sending it swinging. "This is the key."

"And the leviathan can't touch it," Sam added, anticipating Castiel's next objection. "We thought this through, Cas. Really. Trust us."

"Also," Dean put in, "the sooner we do this, the sooner we can close down the portal all the way again, with us on the right side, so how 'bout you stop being all crankypants and take the nice amulet so we can get out of here?" He held the amulet out to Castiel, shaking it again for emphasis.

Dean did have a point, Castiel privately admitted. It seemed he was going to be rescued whether he deserved it or not. He reached out his hand to take the amulet...

There was a blast of heat and light, Dean yelped and dropped the amulet with an exclamation of "Son of a bitch!"

Castiel looked down to see that what was left of the amulet was a puddle of molten metal, then up to see Dean cradling his burnt hand, then across the clearing to where a man stood with his hand outstretched. Castiel blinked and instead of a man, there was a bird made of fire with its wings outstretched. Another blink and back to the man. A phoenix, then.

"You aren't going anywhere," the phoenix said. Around him, Castiel could hear growls of various kinds coming from their companions and the distinctive sound of Sam's rifle.

Without thinking about it, Castiel took a step forward, placing himself between the phoenix and Dean. "I will not allow you to hurt them."

"Hurt _them_?" the phoenix echoed, sounding surprised. "I don't care about your hunter friends one way or another. They can leave whenever they want -- though sooner would probably be better for them than later." He fixed his gaze on Castiel. "No, it's you I'm after."

"Cas?" Dean moved out from behind Castiel to stand beside him instead. He still held his injured hand close to him, but had drawn his gun with the other. "Why are you after Cas?"

The phoenix's gaze shifted to Dean. "Hunters kill monsters, monsters kill hunters. That's just the way it things are, the natural order of things. But what he did..."

Abruptly, Castiel understood. "I used the souls."

"Exactly," the phoenix confirmed. "Monsters we may be, but even we have souls, and we do not deserve to be reduced to nothing more than a power source for an overreaching angel."

"I know," Castiel told him, acknowledging his crime. "It was an error in judgement I deeply regret."

The phoenix shook his head. "Not good enough."

"Not good enough?" Dean echoed. "Well it god damned better be good enough because that's all you're getting."

"This really doesn't concern you," the phoenix said, shooting Dean a disdainful look. "If you were smart, you and your brother would leave now."

"Or what?" Sam was moving in a slow circle which Castiel could see would bring him to stand beside Dean and himself. "You'll try to do to us what you did to that amulet?"

Dean was standing close enough to Castiel for him to hear him mutter under his breath, "Don't go giving him any ideas, Sammy."

But the phoenix just shook his head. "I hold no grudge against you two." He paused. "But I cannot say the same for every other denizen of Purgatory." A very faint smile touched his lips. "Let's just say that this clearing is going to get very crowded in a minute or to. You should leave while you're still able."

Despite the alarm that ran through them all at those words, Dean shook his head stubbornly. "We're not going anywhere without Cas."

Castiel had seen that expression on Dean's face before and knew that it meant there would be no changing his mind, but still Castiel knew he had to try. He'd seen the huge band of vampires that were out for the Winchesters' blood and knew that they couldn't be the only monsters who would want payback. "Dean-" he began, reaching out and laying a hand on Dean's arm.

"No," Dean interrupted before Castiel could even begin his argument. "I'm happy that you're back to being all noble and selfless, but we're not going to just leave and hand you over to this guy. Deal with it."

"He's right," Sam put in, in that quiet, implacable way he had.

"It's too late anyway," the werewolf said, raising her head and scenting the air, while the wyvern beside her whined.

Both Sam and Dean tensed even more, shifting into an even more high alert. "What is it, Madison?" Sam asked, staring out at the shadows around them.

It was Lenore who answered though. "Vampires," she said grimly, then seemed to pause, considering. "And rougarou." An inhuman roar made Dean's expression turn even grimmer.

"And wendigo," he said. "Damn, it's a freaking monster mash out there."

"You should go," Castiel told them firmly, his alarm rising with each new creature named.

"Not going to happen, Cas," Dean told him. He glanced over at the werewolf -- Madison, Sam had called her. "Any chance we can make it to somewhere more defensible?"

Another roar came from the other side of the clearing they were in. "I'm pretty sure that would be a 'no'," Madison replied wryly.

"Yes, if I were you, I'd just put the angel down and leave the playing field while you still can," the phoenix suggested in a pleasant tone.

"You can just shut the fuck up," Dean told him, making a rude gesture with his gun.

The phoenix shrugged nonchalantly. "No matter. Have your little Custard's Last Stand. I'll still get the angel in the end. Only difference will be you won't be in any shape to regret it."

Castiel feared that the phoenix spoke nothing but the truth at that. He watched Sam and Dean share one of those long wordless conversations all conducted in a single look, and he knew that in spite of that, there would be no talking them out of it. It seemed that after everything, he had managed to bring destruction down on his friends' heads after all.

The entirety of his grace cried out in denial at that. He couldn't let that happen, and he _wouldn't_. In that context the decision to act was a simple one, even knowing what it would bring down on his head.

He gathered himself and sent a wave of his power at its most pure out in a circle around him, sheltering his companions under his unfurled wings. The forever night of Purgatory lit as bright as day -- brighter -- and various angry roars and yells filled the air before they shifted tone to ones of fear and pain and then cut off abruptly.

As Castiel let his power fade back to normal levels, Dean cautiously raised his head from where he'd instinctively ducked and covered, to look around him. He gaped a little as he took in the fact that there was no one left who Castiel hadn't deliberately sheltered, then grinned widely. "Cas, that was freaking awesome!" he enthused, clapping Castiel on the shoulder. "I'm remembering now why it was cool to have an angel on our side."

"I'm sorry, Dean," Castiel told him solemnly, knowing what he'd sent into motion even if the others didn't, not yet.

"For what, Cas?" Sam asked with a puzzled frown.

Before Castiel could answer, Lenore broke in, staring up at the sky. Beside her, Madison looked tense and worried and the wyvern whined unhappily. "They're coming," she said. "You knew that much power was going to draw their notice. It did and now they're coming."

"Uh, what?" Dean asked.

Lenore tore her gaze away from the sky to stare incredulously at Sam and Dean. "Can't you feel it? The weight of their attention coming closer and closer?"

Sam and Dean might not be able to, but Castiel certainly could, the same unholy and incomprehensible pressure bearing down on him from the outside that he'd once been unable to keep caged within himself. It had almost ended him then. This time...

"What are you talking about Lenore?" Sam asked, confused but still calm. "Whose attention? Who's coming?"

It was Castiel who answered. "Leviathan."

******* 

The moment after Castiel's announcement that the Leviathan were coming was one of those that seemed to stretch on for far longer than it actually could have lasted, long enough for Sam to burn every detail into his memory. There was shadows and silence all around them, as if the very dimension itself was holding its breath in fear or anticipation.

There was no such ambiguity in their companions, however. Tallis, Madison and Lenore all looked scared shitless, and all of them were shifting nervously as if they longed to flee as far away from where they were as they could. Sam couldn't blame them -- being the center of attention for the Leviathan was never a good -- or comfortable -- thing. He was feeling more than a little of the urge to run himself, even as he steeled himself to face them. Winchesters never ran from a fight.

Sam glanced over at his brother and saw the same conflicted feelings of fear and sheer pig-headed stubbornness in his eyes, along with a healthy dollop of worry when he looked at Cas. And Cas...

Cas looked just as scared as the rest of them, maybe even more so. Of them all, he probably suffered the most at the hands of the Leviathan. But more than that he looked.... resigned, but that was too tame a word for what Sam saw in Cas. There was despair, but also a weary acceptance. It was, Sam thought, the kind of look someone would wear if they were stuck in the middle of the road and saw an 18-wheeler speeding down on them, knowing there was no way to jump out of its way.

It was the look of someone who _knew_ that they were well and truly fucked and that there was nothing they could do to avoid it.

And Sam's gut reaction to that could basically be summed up as _Oh hell no._.

"You all need to leave now," Cas said, looking at each of them in turn, his gaze lingering longest on Dean. He turned to Lenore, Madison and Tallis. "If you get out of the immediate area, they should be so involved with me that they don't bother to search any further."

"Go," Sam added, when they seemed to hesitate. "We're grateful for everything you've done for us, but this isn't your fight. Get out of here while you still can."

"Are you sure-" Madison began, still hesitating.

"We are," Sam said, after a glance over at Dean to confirm.

That was enough to let them give into their instincts and run, though not before Madison had given him a brief hug.

The three of them watched her, Lenore and Tallis leave, then Castiel turned back to Sam and Dean. "I meant you two as well. You will be safe once you're through the barrier to Earth again. You must go. _Now_."

Dean was already shaking his head. "You did that before, too," he said. "Tried to get me to run when they were taking you over. It was practically your last act."

"I did not want them to harm you," Cas replied simply. "I still don't. Dean, _please_."

"No." Dean stepped closer until he was able to reach out and clutch his hands around Cas' shoulders. "I'm tired of having your last acts be about trying to protect me. I'm tired of you having last acts. Sammy and I made a pact that we were going to swear off the whole dying thing. I think you should join."

Cas' expression was as anguished as Sam had ever seen it. "I don't want to die, Dean. But I want to be the cause of harm to you even less. You are my charge, my friend, my..."

"Family, Cas," Dean finished for him when he trailed off. "We're family. You know what that word means to me."

"I do," Cas said, the look he gave Dean was so intimate and laden with meaning that Sam felt like a voyeur watching. "You are all that... and more. Which is why you have to leave."

"Save it," Dean growled. "I'm not letting you go, so someone come up with a better option."

Later Sam could never say how he came to the epiphany he did just then, but he thought it had at least something to do with the way Dean and Cas were standing so close, leaning into each other without being aware of it and how that mirrored one of the drawings in the research he'd read when they were figuring out how to erect the barrier. It brought back the cryptic description of how the amulets worked -- _each will protect a single soul save when hearts entwine with grace and love. Bonds unbreakable will double its power and influence._

At the time, Sam had thought it referred to needing souls that were bonded -- like himself and Dean -- to work at all, but now...

"Profound bond," he said out loud.

Dean looked over at him, irritation mixing with confusion. "What the hell are you going on about, Sam?"

Sam slid his gaze to Cas, who had his head cocked to the side in that angel puzzlement way he had. "You once said you shared a more profound bond with Dean than with me. Would it would be safe to say that extends to everyone else too? That what you share with Dean, you don't share with anyone else?"

"Sam," Dean began, shifting his feet and looking uncomfortable, "I don't know what you're getting at but that's cra-"

He broke off though when Cas interrupted him to say, simply, "Yes."

Dean spun his head back to stare at Cas at that. "You can't-"

"I can," Cas said, overriding Dean again. "And I do. You are... important to me, Dean. More important than any individual should be to an angel. But you are the brightest soul I have ever met, and I feel..." He trailed off, looking down for a moment before raising his gaze to hold Dean's again. "That is why you must go now. I will not be the instrument of your destruction."

" _No_ ," Dean said fiercely. "You're not going to drive me off by going all chick flick on me."

"Actually," Sam broke in, feeling a little giddy at actually having a solution, "the two of you 'going all chick flick' might just be all of our tickets out of here."

That got him both of their undivided attention. "Sam, what-" Dean began, but Sam wasn't going to let go of his momentum now. They didn't have time to deal with Dean getting all avoidant about his feelings now.

"Dean, this is important," he said, putting as much serious earnestness as he could into his voice and expression. "And it's not like I don't know already, but you have to acknowledge it for this to work."

"For what to work? Sam, I-"

"-need to shut up and listen," Sam finished for him. "Since we got here, you've been able to sense where Cas was when there was no way you should've been able to, right?" He saw Cas startle a little at that.

"Yeah, but-" Dean began, but Sam cut him right off again.

"And you and Cas somehow were able to contact each other not only between two dimensions, but _through_ the barrier separating Purgatory and Earth. Which you shouldn't have been able to do. And then there's the trench coat."

Cas frowned in confusion and looked at Dean. "What about the trench coat?"

"Dean fished it out of the water when we thought the Leviathan exploded you," Sam replied while Dean fidgeted. "It's sorta become his security blanket since then. He even sleeps with it."

"It reminded me of you, okay?" Dean admitted when Cas just kept staring at him. "Even with you going full steam off the rails, I didn't want you to be _gone_. You're my friend, Cas, more than that, you're practically family and..." He took a deep breath and sighed. "And I guess that whole profound bond thing runs both ways because... yeah."

It wasn't exactly the most articulate declaration Sam had ever heard, but this was his brother they were talking about. And it seemed to be more than enough for Cas who was looking at Dean with nothing short of adoration. Dean was staring back and the two of them were leaning in ever so slightly closer to each other...

"Good," Sam said, and when that didn't get any reaction out of them, cleared his throat loudly, which caused Dean to snap his head around to glare at him. "You guys can make out like teenagers later," he continued before Dean could say anything. "Right now, we need to get out of here before the leviathan show. All of us."

"But Sam, I-"

Sam was getting good at cutting off arguments before they could waste time. "It's okay, Cas. Dean can bring you through with him. Profound bonds are good for something other than all that staring you two do at each other."

"You sure?" Dean looked hopeful but still seemed to be bracing himself for the worst.

"The amulets' power can be doubled when a 'heart's entwined with grace and love'," Sam quoted, then smiled. "I'm sure."

"Even if he's not, it's a chance, which is more than I had before," Cas said. "And we're running out of time, Sam is right."

As if to punctuate the statement, a roar was heard coming from above. It was still a distance away, but it was more than enough of a goad for them all that they had to get moving.

"It would probably be a good idea if you both were touching the amulet," Sam advised, wanting to give this every hope of success. "And each other."

Dean didn't argue, just took his amulet off and wrapped it about his and Cas' clasped hands. "Cas, I...." He didn't seem able to get out anything else though.

"I know," Cas replied. He gave one of those faint smiles that from anyone else would have been a wide beaming grin. "So do I."

It was perhaps the most inarticulate declaration of love Sam had ever heard, but it was probably also one of the most heartfelt. And it was going to be the thing that got them _all_ home.

"Hang on, guys," Sam said, clasping his hand around his own amulet, and as an afterthought reaching out and taking Cas' other hand. He and the angel didn't share a 'profound bond' but maybe his amulet could help boost the signal anyway. He took a deep breath and began reciting the words that would activate the portal.

When it appeared, a black shimmering curtain in front of them, they all exchanged long looks with each other and then, as one, stepped through.

***** 

They hit the ground hard, all three of them, a tangled heap of limbs and bodies. For a moment Dean just lay there, concentrating on breathing and relishing the fact that the ground all three of them were resting on was the dirt floor of the cabin cellar and not some purgatory equivalent of ground.

"Everyone okay?" Dean asked as he moved to untangle himself and sit up.

Sam muttered something incoherent but affirmative as he also struggled to get his Sasquatch body upright and Cas...

Cas didn't respond.

The relief Dean had felt when it became clear all three of them had made it through the portal was suddenly replaced with a cold knot of fear in the pit of his stomach as he realized that the angel was not only silent but limp and unresponsive.

"Cas?!" he called, as he scrambled to turn the angel over and check him out, looking for some sign, any sign that they hadn't just brought through an empty vessel.

But there was nothing. Castiel's body was as limp and heavy as an oversized doll, eyes closed, skin pale and cool. No breath, no heartbeat. An empty vessel seemed to be exactly what it was.

Dean found himself staring down at him, fear beginning to give way to numb disbelief. The pain he knew would come soon enough. To go through all of that and to still lose Cas... It was the ultimate in unfair.

"I don't understand," Sam said softly, from where he knelt on the other side of Castiel. "I was so sure... It should have worked."

Before Dean could reply, a shudder went through Castiel's body and he gave a sort of gasp before starting to breathe normally. Dazed blue eyes flickered open and focused on Dean's face. "Did we make it?" Cas asked.

Something snapped in Dean and feelings that up to now he barely acknowledged even to himself surged through him like water from a burst dam. There were only so many times he could take thinking he'd lost Cas only to get him back without it breaking everything wide open in him after all. They had apparently hit that magic number because the only way he could think to respond was to lean over and kiss Cas senseless. So he did.

For a long moment Cas didn't respond, but just as Dean was beginning to feel self conscious and awkward, Cas made a soft noise in the back of his throat and brought a hand up to tangle in Dean's short hair, holding him in place as Cas kissed him back with just as much fervor as Dean was kissing him. So much in fact that Dean felt his toes curl in reaction.

When they finally parted, Dean looked into those blue eyes and said the first thing that popped into his head. "Don't tell me you learned that from the pizza man."

"No, Dean," Cas replied with an honest to God smile. "I learned that from _you_."

Dean could practically feel the waves of happiness coming off the angel, and there was really only one way to respond to that so he kissed Cas again.

" _Finally_!" he heard Sam say. Dean flipped him off, but didn't stop kissing Cas.

"Uh, guys?" Sam said a minute or two later. "Much as I'm happy that you've finally moved past all the denial and inappropriate staring, I really don't need to watch you two make out like teenagers." Mouth still occupied, Dean flipped him off again. He heard Sam sigh. "Fine. Knock yourselves out. I'll be upstairs if you need me."

Cas was the one to pull back as Sam got up to leave. "Thank you for coming after me, Sam," he said, glancing back at Dean. "Both of you. After everything I did, I'm not sure I'm worth the risk you took, but I'm grateful."

"You're family, Cas," Sam said with a smile before Dean could reply. "That means you're worth the risk."

"What he said," Dean added, finding himself gripping Cas' arm. "We look out for our own. Get used to it."

Cas looked back and forth between them, then smiled faintly. "I shall endeavour to do so."

"Good," Dean said with a firm nod, something settling in his soul as if Cas was a piece of a jigsaw that just got snapped into place. Who knows? That was probably as good a metaphor as any for the situation.

"Dean?" Cas asked, breaking into his thoughts. "Can we make out like teenagers some more?"

FIN


End file.
